[Realm: Álfheimr]
[Location: Heart Kingdom]
[Pulchritudo]
Gretel could not really sleep that night.
She had tried.
At some point she had even stopped consciously thinking about everything that had happened and simply closed her eyes, hoping exhaustion would eventually do the work for her. It hadn't. Every time she drifted toward sleep, some fragment of the previous night seemed to surface again—the fighting, the destruction, the confusion afterward, and the sight of people being carried from the destroyed estate.
Eventually, she had given up trying to force herself to sleep.
Even so, morning had rushed to meet her.
It came sooner than she wanted it to; the light filtering through the inn's windows was still pale when Gretel found herself lying awake, staring blankly across the clean room.
It was strangely uncomfortable how ordinary everything looked.
